Silicon Valley Bank sinks 🆘

"I don't have a single company run by a man right now that's outperformed the ones run by women."

– Kevin O'Leary

👋 Friends, Rallie here. The newsletter that blends crypto and tech together so well, you'll be asking for the recipe. Cheers!

On the menu:

• 🆘 Silicon Valley Bank sinks

• 🎵 Spotify tunes its style

• 🏆 IWD giveaway!

• 🗞️ Headlines that hit

• 💯 Top tweets

The Rallie Recap

🆘 We're fairly certain that Silicon Valley Bank is not California dreamin' right now.

• Another week, another bank in trouble... here's what happened: Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) is the go-to lender for early-stage businesses and is the banking partner for nearly half of U.S. venture-backed technology and healthcare companies that listed on stock markets in 2022.

• And today, shares of SVB ($SIVB) plunged more than 62%, after the lender announced it completed a firesale of its $21B bond portfolio, taking a $1.8B loss, all to free up its balance sheet and navigate declining deposits. Still with us!?

• Basically, SVB's clients, namely tech startups, are having trouble raising money, while also burning cash fast, resulting in lower deposits with the bank. Some are calling it a 'funding winter' and it's a fallout of a continual increase in borrowing costs by the U.S. Federal Reserve over the last year.

• Essentially, SVB is facing many of the same problems as Silvergate Bank (we wrote about that here last week), but with tech instead of crypto.

• Throughout the day, the blows kept coming: Moody’s cut the company’s credit rating and downgraded its credit outlook to negative.

• And all this news came just on the heels of Silvergate Bank announcing that it intends to wind down its operations and voluntarily liquidate the company’s assets *takes a deep breath*.

📉 It's been a day. Thoughts and prayers to the crypto, tech, and finance bros.

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🎵 Spotify is undergoing a major redesign and time will tell if it hits the right note.

• On Wednesday, at its Stream On event, Spotify announced major changes to its app design, including new vertical video feeds and a built-in pre-save button, taking direct aim at TikTok with endless ability to keep on scrollin'.

• Instead of a static carousel of playlists and recommendations, users will now be shown feeds of visual and audio previews of playlists, albums, podcast episodes, and audiobooks.

• Spotify also recently debuted the Beta launch of their personalized AI guide named DJ, as the company hopes to take the lead in music platforms incorporating AI technology. And we have to hand it to them... DJ is one of the better AI tool names we've come across.

• News of the redesign followed SoundCloud announcing that it was testing a “TikTok-like” vertical video feed for music discovery.

One thing's for sure: TikTok has proven that video wins the attention game, and every major tech company is clearly taking note.

Headlines That Hit

• 🌝 To the moon! An NFT collection has taken the top spot on Open Sea and is soaring in value based on its alleged association with Ethereum cofounder, Vitalik Buterin.

• 🔒 An ex-Goldman Sachs banker was sentenced to 10 years in jail for defrauding a Malaysian development fund to pay for billions of dollars in bribes that were used to finance lavish parties, yachts, and premium real estate.

• 📉 On Wednesday, the U.S. government transferred $1B worth of bitcoin (BTC) recovered from a dark web hack to new wallet addresses, making the price of BTC dip below US$22K amid fears that the gov could sell the bitcoin on the open market, potentially driving the price of bitcoin down even further. No bueno.

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That's all for today. Stay hungry & we'll catch you next time. ✌️

DISCLAIMER: This is not financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions.